


More Time

by Daisy_Rivers



Series: Meant to Be [9]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beach, Childhood Friends, F/M, M/M, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, OT3, Polyamory, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 04:23:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18771121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daisy_Rivers/pseuds/Daisy_Rivers
Summary: The story comes to a close.





	More Time

They set a wedding date for August.

“That’s not much time to plan a wedding,” Catherine said, still trying to wrap her mind around the whole thing.

“We don’t want a big fancy wedding,” Eliza told her, holding John’s hand tightly. “We’d like to get married at the beach house, on the terrace.”

“My dad has a friend who’s a judge,” John said. “He can officiate.”

“Okay, that sounds nice. How many guests do you want to invite?”

“Not many, Mom,” Eliza responded. “We don’t have a lot of relatives, so just our families and some friends. I want Angelica to be my maid of honor, and Peggy and Theo to be bridesmaids.”

Catherine nodded. “Yes, all right, but what about your dress? It usually takes more than a few weeks to find a dress and have it altered.”

“Mom, I’m not that picky. I don’t want a million-dollar dress for a photoshoot in _People_ magazine. I’m sure I can find one.”

“Catering?”

“All that takes is a few phone calls,” John said.

 _And money,_ Catherine thought, but that wasn’t an issue. She threw up her hands. “It sounds like you have everything all figured out.”

Eliza smiled up at John. “Yeah, we do.”

Eliza’s dress was white satin in a classic design that was fitted to her hips and then flared out to a full skirt. She wore a crown of flowers twined with sea shells to hold her veil, and carried white roses accented with sea grass. Angelica wore blue, Peggy green, and Theo gold – beach colors, Eliza had decided. Alex was best man, of course, and Herc and Gil were the groomsmen, all in ordinary tuxes. “I don’t see any way we can wear sea shells,” John had said, much to Herc and Gil’s relief, but it wasn’t true. Pinned inside his and Alex’s shirts were the shell bracelets Eliza had made ten years earlier. Hers was tucked into her bra – her “something old.”

Judge Thomas Heyward, a longtime friend of Henry Laurens, officiated, and Philip Schuyler walked his middle daughter down the stairs to recorded music. There was no band or DJ, but Aaron good-naturedly acted as master of ceremonies so they could have the traditional events like the first dance and cutting the cake. Alex caught the garter, a prearranged joke, and Peggy caught the bouquet. Some people speculated that the young man who had been John’s best friend and his competition for Eliza’s affections might very well be interested her younger sister, but those were people who didn’t know them very well. In fact, Peggy seemed to be completely charmed by Gil, and the two of them spent the whole evening together.

Hours later, on the beach, John, Eliza, and Alex finished their wedding ceremony for themselves, and then they spent a month in Hawaii.

A year later, Eliza received her master’s degree in social work and took a position in a counseling group that worked with children. Two years after that, Alex graduated from law school at the top of his class and received offers from a number of law firms, some of them as far away as New York and Chicago. He’d already made up his mind, though, and joined a firm in Charleston that specialized in environmental law. It would be nearly an hour commute from the beach house, but he could work at home much of the time, and he finally felt that he’d be doing something to protect the ocean he loved so much.

In the meantime, John had already had two gallery shows, one in Columbia and one in Charleston. It didn’t take them long to decide to sell the house in Columbia and live full time next to the ocean. Eliza had no problem finding another counseling job halfway between Charleston and the beach house. It was early autumn when they moved the last of their belongings in, and they stood on the balcony, looking over the dunes at the ocean, gray now on a cloudy day.

“We’re home,” Eliza whispered.

John, one arm around her, and one around Alex, kissed the top of her head. “I always knew this was how it would be,” he said. “I always knew it would be all of us.”

Alex leaned in closer to John. “What do you do when your dreams come true?” he asked, smiling.

“Make new dreams,” Eliza responded. “Think about all the things we’re still going to do. You’re going to save the planet, and John’s going to create great art, and I’m going to help kids who feel like they don’t fit in.” She tugged at John. “Come on, Rachel said she was going to bring lasagna over, and we need to unpack the dishes.”

John and Alex followed her down to the kitchen. “It’s kind of nice to be close enough to our parents that they can bring dinner to us,” Alex mused. “A few years back, I would have said I didn’t want to live this near to them, but now I can see the positive side.”

“Me too,” Eliza said, “especially now.”

“What do you mean?” John asked.

“I’m pregnant.”

*          *          *          *          *

It was a boy, a boy with tan skin and thick, straight black hair who looked nothing like John and not much like Eliza. They named him Philip Henry anyway, and he was a delight to all of them. His grandparents competed for babysitting privileges, and all three of his parents thought he was without a doubt the most amazing kid in the world. By the time he was three, he would run on the beach every morning with either John or Alex, and bring home bits of shells or beach glass for his “collection.” They hired a part time nanny because even though John and Alex mostly worked from home, Philip wanted to “help” them all day long by painting with Papa or typing random letters on his own documents with Daddy. Martha was wonderful with Philip, so they asked her to work full time when Philip’s little sister was born. Philip, who was four, was blown away by the idea of being a big brother. He leaned over and patted the baby’s head very gently. “She gots curly hair like Papa,” he said. She did, curly hair and a scattering of freckles across her nose as soon as she went out in the sun. Her name was Alexandra Rachel, but everyone called her Lexie.

Much, much later, Lexie’s daughter Beth sat on the terrace with Eliza. “In my sociology class, we’ve been talking about social justice and civil rights movements,” she said.

It seemed impossible that Beth was in college now, but her older brother Jack had already graduated and was in medical school. Where had the time gone?

“Do you like the class?” Eliza asked.

Beth nodded, her face serious. “Yeah, but it’s so hard to believe how unfair things used to be – how it was legal to discriminate against people for all kinds of stupid reasons like their skin color or their religion.”

“It may have been legal,” Eliza told her, “but it was never moral.”

“Do you remember it?”

Eliza looked toward the ocean. She couldn’t see it because of the dunes, but she could hear it, and its sound had been a constant in her life for so many years. “Some of it,” she said.

Beth poured some more lemonade for both of them. “Can I ask you something, Gram?”

“Of course.”

“When you and Granddad and Poppy first got married, were people mean to you about it? Did they think you shouldn’t be allowed to marry each other?”

Eliza smiled, thinking of the three of them holding hands on the beach that night, giving Alex his ring that matched hers and John’s, getting “married” in their own way. “We couldn’t be _legally_ married until long after your mother was born,” she told Beth gently. “We’d been in love since we were children, but we didn’t fit the pattern that society had decided was the only correct one. But don’t ever think we weren’t married. We were. It just took a while for the rest of the world to catch up with us.”

There were tears in Beth’s eyes as she leaned over to hug her grandmother. “I’m so sorry, Gram. I … I didn’t realize.”

“It’s all right.” She laughed. “Nobody could have stopped us.” She held out her hand. “Let’s walk down to the beach.”

It took Eliza a little more time to climb over the dunes these days, but Beth helped her, and then they were on the beach, looking out over the ocean. It was a clear day, with the water reflecting blues and greens and the sun making the waves sparkle. Eliza gazed at the water, seeing things that Beth couldn’t. In her mind, she watched three laughing children who grew into passionate young lovers, who became adults with children of their own. So many summers, so many years, so many memories.

“It’s such a pretty day,” Eliza said. “Alex would love it, but John always liked the storms better.”

“Granddad told me once about them going out in the middle of a hurricane when they were kids.”

Eliza laughed. “More than once. Poppy was the daredevil, not Granddad, but he’d follow wherever John led.” She bit her lip and stopped talking.

Beth felt her own throat tighten and put her arm around her grandmother. “You miss them, don’t you?”

“So much,” Eliza whispered, and the tears spilled over. “I can’t wait to see them again.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have thrown in a few breadcrumbs for you to find here and there, like naming the nanny Martha and having Peggy and Gil crush on each other at the wedding. The first is a reference to the historical John Laurens, the second to my own Peggy-and-Gil love story, Provoke Outrage. Judge Thomas Heyward was a real judge in South Carolina during John Laurens's lifetime, and Henry Laurens would have known him because Henry was the kind of big shot who knew everybody.  
> In the interests of full disclosure, I grew up near the ocean and now live a plane ride or several days drive away from it, and I miss it desperately every single day. The air really does taste like salt when there's a storm.  
> Thank you all for following this, reading, leaving kudos, and commenting. If you liked it, I am always writing something, so stick around. You can also follow me on tumblr @daisy-rivers. Love to you all.


End file.
